The Other George Mason

This weekend, George Mason University competes in the Final Four of the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament (Division I). While sports fans may be scratching their heads at this underdog, clawing its way through the brackets, GMU seems to be playing consistently good basketball; I wish them well. What many folks don't realize is that George Mason is also home to one of the most libertarian (and quirky) economics departments in the country. Alexander Tabarrok and Peter Boettke, both employed by said department, give us an illuminating summary in a recent Slate commentary.

Capote: Research Gone Awry?

This review was published originally on cinekklesia on March 4, 2005.

I'm almost sure that I won't watch the Academy Award ceremony tomorrow night. Besides serving as a long, inefficient medium for doling out cinematic awards, Oscar Night presents Hollywood at its worst: narcissistic, self-congratulatory, and shallow. As a movie buff, I actually find the Oscar ceremony a distraction from the art that it supposedly celebrates.

Still, I'm curious as to how Philip Seymour Hoffman will fare in the Best Actor category. Besides producing a virtually flawless performance in Bennett Miller's Capote (2005), Hoffman has been a long-standing "serious" actor in U.S. cinema, producing consistently convincing performances in a wide variety of roles. If you want to see the breadth of Hoffman's abilities, check out his acting in The Big Lebowski (where he plays a "Yes Man" personal assistant), Almost Famous (a music journalist from the Classic Rock era), and Owning Mahoney (a banker who manages to gamble away his clients' money in Vegas and Atlantic City).

Tomorrow night, however, the focus will be on Hoffman's portrayal of Truman Capote, a legend in Twentieth Century American letters and author of such fare as Breakfast at Tiffany's and In Cold Blood. (I have to confess, though, that I have not read any of his works.) The film analyzes his research for the latter, a story of the brutal killing of a rural Kansas family, the men who committed the crime, and the effect that the entire episode had on members of the community.

For the most part, the movie's portrayal of Capote is not at all flattering; the writer comes across as arrogant, narcissistic, and manipulative — in short, a largely unpleasant fellow who nevertheless managed to hold the general public under his charms and who maintained a long-standing friendship with To Kill a Mockingbird author Harper Lee (an Oscar-nominated performance by Catherine Keener). Yet, despite the implication that Truman Capote comes across as a complete lout, Hoffman actually provides some nuance to the character; we see a man who is caught between his narcissistic desire to publish at all costs and his compassion (albeit inconsistent) for the convicted killers who are facing execution.

Beyond Hoffman's masterful performance, Capote pushes us to think about the ethics of research, writing, and how we treat the objects of our study. Capote worked under the rubric of journalism; thus, unlike academic anthropologists and sociologists, he did not have to submit to an Institutional Review Board, the entity that oversees both social and clinical research in order to ensure that "human subjects" are treated ethically. However, even within the looser constraints of journalism, Capote clearly acted outside the ethical bounds of his field, particularly when he lied to one of his main subjects in order to maintain rapport (and thus, to extract more information). There also is a strong sense that Capote became too involved in the subject matter, entangling himself in the plot (rather than "just" writing about it) and losing any sense of analytical distance.

This issue of distancing oneself from the subject of study (one's "objectivity," as some would prefer) still provokes intense debate within social science and journalism. On the one side are those who argue that to sympathize with the subject—or even to make any normative claims about the subject's condition—is to render one's analysis questionable. Social scientists and journalists, this side insists, merely should state "what is" without taking any side. Thus, a sociologist could report that 50 percent of the population of a certain county lived below the poverty line, but he/she could not say that such a condition was "wrong." (Perhaps the sociologist could report that others—e.g., local activists—considered the situation wrong, but he/she could not make that claim.)

On the other side are those who argue that eschewing normative claims is not only counterproductive but dishonest. Everybody looks at life from a particular normative perspective, and to deny that is simply to deceive oneself and others; 'tis better just to get one's perspective out in the open where it can be analyzed, challenged, or defended. In addition, the argument goes, what's so bad about normative claims anyway? Why can't one dig up a certain set of facts about the world and then claim that those facts represent a "bad" situation? Isn't it odd that while some demand "objectivity" from social scientists, those same people may not appreciate a completely detached medical researcher? After all, wouldn't we want an oncologist to consider cancer a "bad thing" and its eradication—or at least the effective treatment of its victims—a "good thing"?

While partisans on either side may not appreciate it, the solution to this conundrum seems to lie somewhere in the middle. Yes, both social scientists and journalists need to maintain a certain level of analytical distance and to avoid too much entanglement with the story; an overly emotional attachment to one's subject can cloud the researcher's vision to the detriment of accuracy. However, to deny one's perspective—or, more broadly, one's humanity—seems both naive and disingenuous; an acknowledgement of perspective actually may enhance one's work by providing a richer, more holistic context in which to study it.

The problem with Truman Capote was two-fold: he became too involved in the story, and his motives for doing so were almost completely self-serving. It would be one thing for him to make a normative claim about his subject's plight and to advocate on his behalf (which he briefly appears to do at the beginning of the movie); while the "detached" researcher would be critical of such a move, Capote at least would be acting out of a concern for the other. Instead, he becomes overly involved for the sake of his book (and the subsequent accolades that he needs to sustain his ego). For the most part (there are exceptions here-and-there), Capote does not act out of compassion or moral concern; he simply is looking out for "Number 1."

This brings us to the final, nagging question that Capote leaves in our minds. Does not all journalism and human subject research involve this danger of objectifying the other? Even if one is engaged in such noble pursuits as studying the causes of poverty or investigating new treatments for cancer, there nevertheless exists a self-serving aspect to the work (beyond just earning a salary). Don't the vast majority of academics want tenure? Wouldn't a reporter want to win a journalistic award for a "groundbreaking" or "courageous" series? While Capote's methods and motivations represent an extreme side of research gone awry, Bennett Miller's film nevertheless serves as a useful word of caution: if you look in the mirror and see Phillip Seymour Hoffman staring back at you, then you've gone too far.

Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room - Is Ambition Wrong?

This review was published originally on cinekklesia on February 25, 2006.

Avid moviegoers know that documentaries have come into their own during the past several years (or at least they finally have started to receive the recognition they deserve). Perhaps Michael Moore, the either-you-love-him-or-you-hate-him gadfly, can claim some credit, introducing audiences to documentaries that are both entertaining (or infuriating, depending on your point of view) and politically charged. Or, perhaps reality television has reminded us that truth is, indeed, stranger than fiction. Or, maybe the increasing availability of (relatively) inexpensive recording and editing equipment, which allows more people to archive their own lived experience, has sparked our interest in the everyday, in "real people," in the fascinating stories unfolding all around us.

Regardless of the reason, documentaries are enjoying unprecedented recognition these days, and Alex Gibney's Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (2005) is no exception, having been nominated for an Oscar. Based on the journalistic account written by Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind, Gibney's film traces the spectacular rise and disastrous fall of one of Wall Street's darling companies from the 1990's. Specifically, Enron traces the fraudulent activity of its three principal conspirators: Kenneth Lay, head of the ship; Jeffrey Skilling, Lay's right-hand man and arguably the architect of the fraud; and Andrew Fastow, the number cruncher who created the firm's vast array of shadow companies that became infamous when finally exposed to the light of day.

Enron's pre-bankruptcy fame resulted largely from its innovations in energy markets, and the trading floor at its Houston headquarters became the hub of a cutthroat, testosterone-fueled exchange of supply-and-demand, supervised from above by Lay and Skilling (who each had his own staircase to the upper-level offices). Enron was pushing the envelope constantly, finding new commodities to trade; one of its most ambitious (and ultimately disastrous) endeavors was the new broadband technology that was just emerging in the 1990s — if gold, silver, and oil could be traded on the market, then why not IT infrastructure?

Despite its apparent success, Enron proved to be a lot more sizzle than steak. Besides pushing the envelope in terms of energy trading, it also engaged in some "cutting-edge" accounting practices, allowing it to claim revenue that, in real terms, had yet to enter its coffers. Its sneaky financial dealings (conducted with at least some degree of knowledge from external accountants and bankers) along with a culture of nodding acquiescence from stock analysts (who should have been doing their homework instead of taking Skilling's words at face value), allowed the fraud to continue unabated for years — until the whole deck of cards crashed in the fall of 2001.

Gibney does a good job of showing us not only the mechanics of the fraud committed by Lay et al., but also the culture of greed, machismo, and hubris that permeated the company and led to its eventual collapse. My only major disagreement with the film (and it's a big one) lies in its analysis of California's energy crisis and Enron's role therein. Readers may remember how the world's sixth-largest economy suffered sky-high electricity rates and rolling blackouts several years ago, a malady that conventional wisdom blamed on deregulation. In reality, the crisis stemmed from a botched quasi-deregulation on the part of California's state government; unfortunately, Gibney accepts the flawed conventional wisdom at face value and lingers on it ad nauseam, demonizing the Enron traders who took advantage of the crisis in order to make a quick buck. While one certainly can argue that profiting off California residents at their point of desperation was highly unethical, the ultimate blame for the residents' woes did not lie with deregulation or, specifically, Enron. Yet, I digress.

The most interesting aspect of Enron is its implicit discussion of ambition. All of the main players in the scandal, along with the hordes of rambunctious energy traders, were motivated by an intense ambition rooted in greed. While ambition is not intrinsically immoral (it simply could be a "desire to achieve a particular end," as Merriam-Webster notes), the word nevertheless carries a connotation of narcissism — so much so that Merriam-Webster's first definition is "an ardent desire for rank, fame, or power."

Thus, one who is ambitious (and that includes all of us at some point) walks a fine line between merely wanting to "achieve a particular end" and wanting that end to serve us. While Enron represents an extreme case of ambition gone wrong, it clarifies the many variables that propel those who would follow a similar path (even on a smaller scale): a perpetual desire to improve one's financial lot and social status; an unquestioning acquiescence to a macho, take-no-prisoners work culture; and an unrealistic, arrogant belief in one's own ability to succeed (reportedly, when a business school professor asked Skilling whether he was smart, he replied: "I'm f***ing smart!").

It should be noted that such unruly, self-centered ambition is not found only in business but in most lines of work: academia, law, medicine — even film criticism! Such ambition is particularly dangerous because of its subtlety; unlike "obvious" sins like murder or adultery, self-centered ambition can remain hidden deep within the soul — so long as the person harboring it doesn't commit an Enron-style gaff, his/her subconscious search for Mammon can continue unabated.

So what, then, is proper ambition? Ultimately, from a Biblical standpoint, it seems that the only thing worth striving for is serving God. This, of course, is the pat Sunday School answer, but that certainly doesn't make it incorrect. If we are to take seriously Jesus' words regarding God and Money (Lk 16:13) or Paul's and James' words regarding the evils of selfish ambition (Php 2:3 and Jas 3:13-16, respectively), then we must re-examine continually why we do what we do. There are few jobs and careers that are intrinsically wrong, but the attitudes and motivations behind our vocations vary greatly, and we easily can find ourselves teetering towards the side of Mammon. (What makes Lay's case particularly tragic is his religious background: his father was a Baptist minister of humble means.)

In all fairness, we should note that neither Lay nor Skilling have been convicted of the charges levied against them; as of this writing, their case is being heard in a Houston court room. Of course, even if the jury acquits them, their connection with one of the largest bankruptcies in U.S. history shall remain an integral part of their identities. More importantly, whether they have learned anything about the dangerous side of ambition is (and perhaps forever will remain) an open question.